Interview films with Jewish East Berliners
Until recently, the lives of Jews in the GDR were a little-known aspect of East German history. As part of the jewish cultureclub eastberlin project run by the Institut für Neue Soziale Plastik (Institute for new social sculptures), since 2023, contemporary witnesses with Jewish family histories have been interviewed about their experiences and socialization, about the politics of memory and anti-Semitism in the GDR, about the opportunities for Jewish everyday life, and about the tension between socialism and Judaism.
By summer 2025, a total of 12 interviews had been conducted, and just under half of these are now available in half-hour edited versions. These were presented at the Jüdische Ossis III mini festival on November 17 and 18, 2025, and subsequently made available here.
INTERVIEWER: DR. BETTINA LEDER;
CAMERA, EDITING: TOBIAS JALL
Overview of interview films
Ellen Händler
In the interview, she talks about her parents' difficult survival in Great Britain, the close relationships within her family, and the contradictions of life in the GDR. Like many other Jewish citizens of the GDR, she understands her Judaism as a cultural affiliation and as a mission to engage in remembrance and anti-fascism.
Ellen Händler was born in East Berlin in 1948. Her mother, Hella, fled to Great Britain with her sister on a Kindertransport after Kristallnacht, where she met her future husband, Werner. The couple returned to Berlin, out of conviction that "the Nazis must not have succeeded in making Germany 'free of Jews.'"
The past was always discussed openly in the family: Ellen Händler knew from a young age that almost all of her relatives had been murdered because they were Jews. Her parents were not religious, but they talked to their two daughters about Jewish traditions. At the age of 14, Ellen Händler visited Auschwitz with her father, searching for documents about his parents. In the late 1980s, she frequently accompanied her parents to events organized by the Jewish Cultural Association. The family members have always maintained very close relationships. Ellen Händler is the mother of two children and has four grandchildren.
After finishing school, she studied sociology and earned a doctorate. She then worked in the Office for Youth Affairs and was a specialist advisor for education in the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers of the GDR. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was one of the few employees who did not become unemployed. She was the first freely elected staff representative at the branch office of the Federal Chancellery and later a press spokesperson for a federal agency. Although her qualifications were recognized and she was eligible to work as a senior civil servant, she was only classified as a case worker.
Together with Uta Mitsching-Viertel, she wrote the books »Unerhörte Ostfrauen« (Unheard (of) women from the East) 2019, »Problem Zone Ostmann?« (Men from the East, a problem zone?) 2021, »Die DDR ist nachhal(l)tig» (Sustaining echoes of the GDR) 2024.
Since 1998, she has been the chairwoman of the Federation of Antifascists in Berlin-Treptow.
Back to overviewEva Nickel
Today, she lives in Prenzlauer Berg, in the house where she grew up. Among other things, Eva Nickel offers guided tours of Jewish Berlin and visits schools to talk to children about the Nazi era.
Eva Nickel was born in 1948 in the Jewish Hospital in Wedding, in the French sector of Berlin, and grew up in the eastern part of the city.
Eva's mother was the only member of her family to survive the Nazi era; her young daughters, Ruth and Gitti, were murdered in Auschwitz. Eva herself had been hidden by acquaintances and thus survived. A few years after the war, she married the son of one of her rescuers – Eva Nickel's father.
Eva was raised by her (non-Jewish) father as a conscious Jew. He understood her birth, four years after the murder of her half-sisters and the Shoah, as a political calling. From the very beginning, she was immersed in Jewish life and grew up as part of the Jewish community.
After graduating from school, she initially trained as a costume designer in the costume workshops of East German television and later studied economics education. For over 20 years, she worked in vocational training for commercial and clerical apprentices.
Alongside her professional work, she volunteered to establish and lead a children's group within the East Berlin Jewish community in the 1970s and 80s.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the loss of her job, she began working as a social worker with the Jewish Community of Berlin. She qualified as a social worker and supported many victims of Nazi persecution, many of whom she had known since childhood.
Even in retirement, she continues to support some of her former clients and remains a source of strength for them. Since 2023, she has volunteered with the Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany (ZWST) on antisemitism prevention, conducting seminars and training sessions. She also advises theater groups preparing performances on this topic for schools and youth groups.
Back to overviewLeah Carola Czollek
Leah Carola Czollek talks about her relationship with her father and how she was raised to be a fighter. She speaks of the feeling of having grown up in a cemetery. She talks about antisemitism in the GDR and privileges, about the development of Jewish life in the 1980s and the possibility of experiencing Jewishness as something vibrant. She discusses how her experiences in the GDR and her Jewish background influence her political work, about institutionalized and instrumentalized remembrance in East and West, and her loneliness after October 7, 2023.
Leah Carola Czollek was born in 1954 in East Berlin. She studied law at Humboldt University in Berlin. In 1989, after a five-year attempt, she managed to emigrate to West Germany, but because her degree was not recognized, she could not practice law. She completed a second degree in social pedagogy at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences in 1994. She has since been active in adult education and also works as an author. In 2005, she co-founded the Institute for Social Justice and Radical Diversity with Gudrun Perko which they continue to direct together.
Her father, Walter Czollek – a Jewish communist – survived several concentration camps before being expelled from Germany. In Shanghai, he became the leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in China. He returned to Berlin in 1947. Later, he became the head of the publishing house Volk und Welt. There he met Leah Carola Czollek's mother, Dr. Roswitha Czollek (née Kaminski), who at that time worked as an editor at a publishing house and later as a researcher at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR.
Back to overviewAndré Herzberg
André Herzberg recounts this inner conflict, family traumas, and unspoken issues. He speaks of missing kippot and improvised Jewish life, of the moving voice of Estrongo Nachama, and his own search for happiness. He explores rock music as a counter-model both to rigid socialism and to the sorrow of Jewish memory. And he tells of the search for, and eventual arrival at, his own Jewish identity.
André Herzberg was born in East Berlin in 1955. His mother, Ursula Herzberg, was a public prosecutor in the GDR, and his father, Hans, was a journalist. They met while in exile in Britain, where they had fled to from the Nazis. In 1947, they returned to Berlin, first to West Berlin, then to the Soviet zone of occupation.
André Herzberg studied at School of Music Hanns Eisler; in 1981 he became the frontman of the band »Pankow«, one of the most successful rock bands in the GDR. His lyrics and stage performances repeatedly brought him into conflict with the authorities, resulting in broadcasts being canceled and album releases being delayed. In 1988, he played a concert with the band to raise funds for the reconstruction of the Neue Synagoge (New Synagogue) on Oranienburger Straße.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, André Herzberg continued to enjoy success as a solo musician and began writing.
Herzberg grew up primarily with his mother, as his parents divorced when he was young. Both parents were staunch communists, yet André Herzberg’s mother Ursula regularly took her son to the Rykestraße synagogue and tried to instill in him an awareness of his Jewish heritage. Her communist worldview and her experiences as a Jew repeatedly clashed.
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